Welfare, Oil Workers and the Labour Movement in Venezuela

Abstract

The privileged status historically enjoyed by petroleum workers in Venezuela is due as much to general welfare benefits provided by the companies as to superior wages. Welfare provisions have been at the centre of heated debate in collective bargaining sessions as well as in the periodical labour conflicts which have erupted in the industry. Welfare benefits, however, were not the main initial concern of the oil workers movement in the 1930s and 1940s when labour conflict centred on union recognition and the demand for decent wages. In the years following the signing of the first rudimentary collective bargaining agreement in the industry in 1945 when companies granted union recognition, the oil workers succeeded in greatly expanding the coverage of contracts to include such diverse workeraspirations as job security, housing, clinics, schools, the comisariatos (company-run stores whose prices were artificially low), and regulation of the practice of contracting work out to contratistas. This latter issue was important because the contratista system eliminated job security as well as important fringe benefits, while accepting the existing wage structure.